


Creep

by lofemawk



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, F/F, Music, Radiohead, this really doesn't make a lot of sense, trigger warning eating disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 13:17:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13124514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lofemawk/pseuds/lofemawk
Summary: Max Mayfield remembered the pain of imperfection.





	Creep

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy. If you're here for the Elmax shit, hold on a second.
> 
> This fic represents how I have been with mental health throughout my teenage years. I highly, highly recommend listening to Creep by Radiohead while you read this, as it basically sums up the entire work. My brother said that Creep is the "national anthem of weirdo teenage boys," but I am a queer girl and it works for us too. Also, this won't make a lot of sense plot-wise. 
> 
> Trigger warning for eating disorders n' crap.

Max Mayfield stepped out of the blustery wind and into the warm record store, snowflakes dusting her red hair and black coat. She was looking for something specific--well, was she? She knew that Will liked music, and she wanted to get him something he might like for their reunion for Christmas, when Max returned to Hawkins from her university in Maine. She hoped to find a vinyl of some album by The Clash or something like that, but one sign caught her eye.

 

Creep by Radiohead.

 

Max had heard Radiohead before, but never this song. Sure enough, it was new. 

 

So she got The Clash for Will, and as the bored teenager behind the desk popped a bubble in his gum, Max ran back and got a cassette from the stack of Creep cassettes. The teenager looked as if Max’s two-second run to the Radiohead stand had delayed something much more important than staring at mingling customers, and when she set down the tape, he rolled his eyes so hard she thought they might get stuck. Max, as an almost twenty-year-old college sophomore, should have been more irritated with this kid. But she remembered being fifteen, and feeling like everyone around her was incompetent or purposefully trying to make her life harder. Normally Max didn’t give her past much thought (she liked to keep the demogorgons and monsters firmly in the back of her head), but hey, it was Christmastime. Everyone was a bit nostalgic around Christmas. Also, something about the kid looked vaguely familiar. 

 

The kid--Richie, his name tag said--cleared his throat and pushed the tape and the vinyl across the counter and held his hand out palm-up, waiting for payment. Max complied and Richie sorted her money into compartments in a makeshift cash register. Okay, it was a shoebox with bits of card stock acting as partitions for the bills and coins. Max thanked him and put a quarter in the tip jar, which he acknowledged with a grunt and a vague nod in her direction before distracting himself by running his fingers over his bangs, pulling them over his eyes. Typical goth. 

 

By the time Max got back to her dorm, the snow had died down and left a beautiful carped of white. Despite Max living with snow for the past six years, her inner California girl never stopped marveling at it. Her roommate was about to leave to “fuck cute Charlie from chem”, and on her way out she spotted the tape that Max had thrown onto her bed.

 

“Creep, huh?”

 

Max looked up, then back down at the tape. “Oh. Yeah.”

 

Max’s roommate smirked. “Think of someone you had a crush on. It makes the song better.” With that, she shut the door behind her to head out of the building.

 

Max shoved Will’s vinyl into the bag that housed her other presents—a signed copy of Stephen King’s IT for Mike, a Beanie-Baby dinosaur for Dustin, and a bandana she had embroidered herself (badly, but it was the thought that counted) for Lucas. She still hadn’t thought of something to get El, but she still had a day for come up with something. 

 

That was when Max looked back at the cassette. She popped it into her walkman and put on her headphones. As the opening guitar and drums played, the tried to think of a crush she had. It wasn’t hard to think of who.

 

The first person who came to mind had beautiful brown hair she refused to cut, and a sweet button nose, and the smile of someone who’s innocence wasn’t shattered by any hardships she endured.

 

El, the girl with magical powers and a sweet kindness unspoiled by suffering and pain. She was an angel, a feather floating in beautiful light, unaffected by anyone or anything else at all.

 

_ You’re so fucking special _

 

El, the girl who had Mike Wheeler’s heart until she didn’t, but continued being wonderful to him and everyone else.

 

_ I wish I was special _

 

But who was Max? She was a creep, a weirdo, an awful amalgamation of cruel words and fists and running, running, running away when things got too much and running back in fits of anger. And as El smiled at her and wrapped a beautiful arm around Max’s shoulders and pulled her into a beautiful hug, Max’s heart swelled until she thought that maybe,  just maybe,  she was beautiful too.

 

But she wasn’t. She was too boyish, too angry, too competitive to match with El, beautiful, sweet, kind El.

 

So Max tried to take control. She was too boyish? She started wearing skirts and dresses, to the confusion of literally everyone. She tried to be sweet and caring. And she tried to be beautiful, in the dainty

way that El was. Oh, God, she wanted that so much. And if it meant eating three slices of an apple every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then so be it. 

 

_ You’re so fucking special _

 

But she couldn’t compare. Her cute schoolgirl crush turned into an obsession, a need to be perfect, not just for El, but for the world. For Mike and Will and Dustin and Lucas.

 

_ Whatever makes you happy _

 

But one day she broke. After a fight between her stepfather and her mother broke out and punches were thrown, Max jumped from her window and ran as far as she could. Her matchstick legs carried her to a cabin in the woods, and when Hopper opened the door, she buckled to her knees in a sobbing mess. Hopper didn’t ask any questions, just picked her up and set her on the sofa. Later she found out how scared Hopper was, how she weighed as much as a child and how she cried for hours. And she spilled. She told El about her love and her about her three apple slices and her want, no, her  _ need  _ to be perfect. And El had held her, and pressed her lips against Max’s red hair and in that moment, Max didn’t need to be perfect.

 

The song ended with a click, and Max opened her eyes, wiping tears she didn’t know were falling from her cheeks. She popped the tape out of her Walkman and just held it for a moment. She ran her thumb over the line of tape, where someone had written neatly  _ Radiohead--Creep, 1990.  _ Max scrambled to find a Sharpie and, in the remaining space on the tape, she wrote in her neatest handwriting,

 

_ Christmas 1990. To El, From Max.  _

 

And, after a moment of hesitation, she added,

 

_ xoxo _

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you liked it! Take the ending how you want, if you want Elmax to sail, then Elmax is gonna sail. But if you, like me, enjoy inflicting emotional pain on yourself by making fictional characters suffer, then you do that I guess.
> 
> Also, did you like my blatant IT references? Geddit, cuz Max is in Maine, and the timeline works out that the Losers Club would be about 15-16 in 1990 and Richie looks familiar because he's younger Mike? Geddit? Eyyyyyyyyyy........
> 
> Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I'll see you all in 2018!


End file.
